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Thought experiment: let's say we could implement this tomorrow. What would be the effect on our politics? My theory is that it would somewhat rectify our inhere

Thought experiment: let's say we could implement this tomorrow. What would be the effect on our politics? My theory is that it would somewhat rectify our inherent rural bias[1]. [1] http://teachingwithdata.blogspot.com/2011/06/elections-and-rural-bias.html http://teachingwithdata.blogspot.com/2011/06/elections-and-r...

fusiongyro 14y ago
> States with small populations (which tend, of course, to be rural) are overrepresented in the Senate and Electoral College. That's the whole point of the Senate: to give states equal weight, not citizens. For that, we have the House, where everybody does (in principle) have equal command of a representative. This is pointing to a feature and calling it a bug.
- wtvanhest 14y ago
  >This is pointing to a feature and calling it a bug. That depends on if you are a democrat of republican. Democrats would probably prefer to have every state have equal population and make representation equal for all. Republicans would probably prefer to keep the old system in place which gives land mass credit over individual people. I'm not arguing for either one, but saying it is definitely a feature is in the eye of the beholder. EDIT: I made a bad assumption about who would favor what system. In any event, the basic point stands that one group will think its a bug, while the other group will think it is a feature.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    No, the old system gives the Senate and the House equal power, so it gives equal power to both conceptions.
  - bcoates 14y ago
    This doesn't jibe with the current House and Senate, where the equal-population represented House has a substantial Republican edge and the Senate has a majority of Democrats. Edit: btilly below is right, the House isn't technically proportional representation, it's equal-population districts. Still, state by state representation doesn't seem to be breaking reliably for Republicans.
    - btilly 14y ago
      If the House is "proportionately representative" then how did Democrats win substantially in the popular vote in congressional races, while Republicans won the house by a solid margin?
      - willholloway 14y ago
        One word: Gerrymandering. The Republicans were able to control the house while losing the national congressional popular vote by being better able to redistrict their congressional seats in ways that were favorable to them. This is why it is important which party controls State legislatures, those legislatures favor their own party when they draw the map.
      - tokenadult 14y ago
        The same way that the reverse used to happen when the Democratic Party caucus had a majority in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. In those days, there was much higher turnout in Republican-leaning districts, but there were fewer of those districts, because Republican voters were concentrated into just a few congressional districts in most states by state legislatures that mostly had a Democratic majority. Now that the tables are turned, people from the other side of the aisle notice this as a problem, but always it takes "tide" elections to switch majority control of state legislatures, which then lock in place (until the next tide) advantages for the majority party in the drawing of electoral districts. This too shall pass.
      - PotatoEngineer 14y ago
        A note on how gerrymandering works: In a perfectly gerrymandered system, the party in power can win using only 25.1% of the vote - and that's if all districts have equal population. You can get by with even less if the districts have imbalanced populations. In that "perfect" system, you draw the districts so that your detractors are 100% of the population in the districts you know that you're going to lose, and your supporters are 50.1% of the population in the ares you want to win. In real life, of course, it's messier and you can't draw the lines quite so perfectly, but here's a link to the districts near Chicago - look how oddly-shaped they are, especially as you get closer to the city center. (They'll probably change again next election season, doubly so if the other party gets control.) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/IL http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/IL
  - twoodfin 14y ago
    I don't think the politics break out quite the way you think. For the 10 smallest states by population, 14 of the 20 senators caucus with the Democrats. I think a radical electoral rewrite like this would probably help the Democrats in the Senate, but not by as much as you might think.
    - willholloway 14y ago
      Those 14 Senators are some of the most conservative in the Democratic party and some of them often side with the Republicans on key issues, and/or play the middle to get more of whatever it is they want. Remember how hard it was for Obama to pass health care reform when he had 59 Democrats and Joe Lieberman? Thats what the Senate + the filibuster does to our politics, it grinds it to a halt. Edit: First line should read: Some of those 14 Senators are amongst the most conservative in the Democratic party.
      - twoodfin 14y ago
        Huh? Bernie Sanders and Pat Leahy? The Rhode Island and Delaware delegations? I think you have a narrative in your head that is detached from reality.
        willholloway 14y ago
        My thesis is simply that more rural states tend towards more conservative politics and when Democrats get elected in rural states they tend to be the more conservative members of the Democratic party. Ben Nelson is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. During the health care reform bill he was a holdout until the end, threatening his own parties signature piece of legislation. He caved when his state was given a special deal.
        twoodfin 14y ago
        But small states aren't all rural, and even some of the ones that are elect fairly liberal Senators. Vermont is the classic case, but Democrats from the Dakotas have been almost legendarily liberal, too. Hell, Tom Daschle was Minority/Majority Leader. And liberal Republicans get elected from small states, too. Remember Lincoln Chafee?
  - willholloway 14y ago
    Yes, the Senate is a massive structural advantage for the Republican party and it's policies in the US. It is an advantage that violates the principle of one person one vote and equal representation. People that believe in equal representation as a founding principal of democracy are justifiably outraged by this assault to democratic principles. The Senate was a compromise to form the union at the start, and it has evolved with time. The 17th amendment gave the people the right to vote for their senators directly, previously state legislatures elected senators for the people. The basic truth that all men are equal and there should be one vote for one man supersedes the privilege of some citizens, in some states, having more political power than other citizens in other states. Citizens of large states do not deserve to be discriminated against in the legislature while at the same time subsidizing rural states. The rural states get more than they give in taxes. It's just not right. The Senate, in it's current stage of metamorphosis, is a basic violation of democratic principles and the time has come to alter or abolish it. A quixotic cause to rally for no doubt, but a right and good cause for anyone that keeps a candle burning in the window, that one day America will live up to its promise and potential.
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      I have to wonder if you'd feel this strongly about these particular principles if you knew about approval voting or what happens in countries with a unicameral parliament.
      - willholloway 14y ago
        Explain what happens in countries with a unicameral system that you think are negative? I like the streamlined efficiency of a unicameral system in a time where technology is changing things so quickly. New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden have moved from a bicameral to a unicameral system. In the United States, Nebraska operates with one. What are the negatives?
    - tbrownaw 14y ago
      It's just not right. The Senate, in it's current stage of metamorphosis, is a basic violation of democratic principles and the time has come to alter or abolish it. Does not follow. Democracy is not the one true form of government. Constitutional representative democracy just has relatively few catastrophic failure modes.
- afterburner 14y ago
  The whole idea of trying to do that may, in fact, still be a problem.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    Whether it is or not, it's misleading to say "States with small populations... are overrepresented in the Senate" because all states are equally represented in the Senate, by design. Populations are not equally represented in the Senate by the same design. If you consider this a "problem," fine, but the only solution would be to rewrite the Constitution.
- wutbrodo 14y ago
  Stating that it's the point of the Senate does not make it desirable. Not to mention the fact that it's not the _only_ point of the Senate: it was also designed to be a smaller, more deliberate body than the House, with each member trying to represent larger (and theoretically more diverse) constituencies with longer term limits (and thus less knee-jerk responsiveness to the whims of the people). This function of the Senate is IMO far more important than arbitrarily giving group A of citizens multiple times more political power than group B. Equal representation of states was conceived of in a time when our nation was very different. The Senate's current form was an acknowledgement of the fact that each state was sovereign. The framing of our Constitution almost bears more similarity to the EU than it does to the US that we recognize today, at least with respect to the attitudes towards the relative independence of each state. On top of that, the divisions that made a "state" anything more than an arbitrary administrative division based on an accident of history are largely gone. The urban-rural divide is far more of a dividing line in terms of demography and ideology than state lines are. Citizens of Los Angeles and Richmond, VA are far more similar to each other than they are to citizens of Shasta County, CA or Wythe County, VA. Just look at any per-county electoral map if you don't believe me. This map, or something like it, preserves all the benefits of the Senate while going a long way to fix what's horribly broken about it: namely, granting huge amounts of political power to arbitrary blocks of citizens.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    I appreciate your response. For what it's worth, I like this map and I am a rural American (a citizen of "Shiprock," apparently). I'm aware of all and agree with most of your points. What I am saying is that in the "rural bias" link they refer to the Senate as "overrepresenting rural citizens" and the point I'm making is that the Senate is not about representing citizens, it's about representing states. And it's meant to balance the House, which is about representing citizens. So the rural bias of the one ought to be adequately met by the urban bias of the other. The ethanol subsidy may be stupid and bad, I'd hardly put it in the top 10 problems we have. I think it would take a lot of spin to recast all our problems as inherited from the Senate and wide open spaces. The idea that you're dominated by the whims of rural voters is a little absurd when we're both so clearly dominated by the whims of large corporations and special interests. To me, this is simply whining about the wrong problem, and a much harder problem to solve. It's not going to be fixed either by an amendment or by redrawing state lines, so what exactly is being proposed here? Nothing--it's simply a fun thought experiment. I just don't approve of fun thought experiments becoming vehicles for absurdist political melodrama.
- mikeash 14y ago
  I would say that you're pointing to a bug and calling it a feature, personally.
newbie12 14y ago
"Rural bias" is a feature, not a bug. In allocating power in Congress and the Electoral College, the Founders wanted to give weight to geographic region as well as population. Obviously this benefits lower populated states. America was founded as a union of states, and a republic, and was not designed as a direct democracy. Rule of the urban majority mob would be a lot worse than the current structure.
- noahl 14y ago
  Is it true that they wanted to give weight to geographic regions? I'm curious because the way I heard the story it went something like, "they needed the House to get the big states to agree to the Constitution, and they needed the Senate to get the small states to agree". That also has the effect you're talking about, but I never heard that it was deliberate. I would be interested in why they set it up that way.
  - oldcigarette 14y ago
    Yeah this is pretty much it. The senate is there to help preserve the state's rights equally. Without it the larger states get an unobstructed bigger say over the smaller ones. Remember the federal government was setup to be very limited keeping most of the power in the hands of the states.
  - newbie12 14y ago
    From the Federalist Papers 62: "In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic. Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger." http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/fed/blfed62.htm http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/fed/blfed62.htm
ctdonath 14y ago
It would relieve some of the rural areas of the overwhelming urban bias. Most of New York is rural, suffering from being out-populated by New York City; "upstate" NY would like to secede from NYC and get their freedom/liberty back. I left NY per its political oppression; returning to the same homes now in Adirondack state would be marvelous. Some states are ripe for "redistricting".
- notirk 14y ago
  While this isn't a hot topic among New Yorkers I know, I did have a professor at b-school (NYU) who went on rants about the amount of money transferred by the citizens of New York City to the rest of the state of NY. If this is true, I wouldn't be surprised if most "downstate" residents wouldn't mind splitting the state in two, also. Seeing the typical political lockup between the senate and assembly in Albany, I think it would be best for all state citizens to split NYS.
  - jessaustin 14y ago
    This money transfer, about which urbanites complain regularly and in numerous contexts, is what one would expect given well-known legislative dynamics. Rural legislators represent constituents who are mostly against expanded benefits spending (you might say that these constituents' preferences are against their interests, but that doesn't change those actual observed preferences). In order for rural legislators to support new benefits against the wishes of their constituents, they must be bribed by receiving an outsize share. I think this redrawing of states would end that dynamic decisively, which maybe is what urban people want.
  - ctdonath 14y ago
    If you throw enough money at people, it's hard for them to refuse even when they don't like the circumstances. Take a hard look at WHY all that money is being transferred. Example: Milk production is heavily subsidized in NY, obviously a lot of money being given to rural businesses. Most of the farmers don't want the subsidies, but if they refuse the 'free' money their product prices would rise 2-3x and instantly be driven out of the market. A few politicians find it very beneficial to keep those subsidies in place. Don't complain about people accepting offers they can't refuse.

fusiongyro 14y ago

> States with small populations (which tend, of course, to be rural) are overrepresented in the Senate and Electoral College. That's the whole point of the Senate: to give states equal weight, not citizens. For that, we have the House, where everybody does (in principle) have equal command of a representative. This is pointing to a feature and calling it a bug.

wtvanhest 14y ago
>This is pointing to a feature and calling it a bug. That depends on if you are a democrat of republican. Democrats would probably prefer to have every state have equal population and make representation equal for all. Republicans would probably prefer to keep the old system in place which gives land mass credit over individual people. I'm not arguing for either one, but saying it is definitely a feature is in the eye of the beholder. EDIT: I made a bad assumption about who would favor what system. In any event, the basic point stands that one group will think its a bug, while the other group will think it is a feature.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  No, the old system gives the Senate and the House equal power, so it gives equal power to both conceptions.
- bcoates 14y ago
  This doesn't jibe with the current House and Senate, where the equal-population represented House has a substantial Republican edge and the Senate has a majority of Democrats. Edit: btilly below is right, the House isn't technically proportional representation, it's equal-population districts. Still, state by state representation doesn't seem to be breaking reliably for Republicans.
  - btilly 14y ago
    If the House is "proportionately representative" then how did Democrats win substantially in the popular vote in congressional races, while Republicans won the house by a solid margin?
    - willholloway 14y ago
      One word: Gerrymandering. The Republicans were able to control the house while losing the national congressional popular vote by being better able to redistrict their congressional seats in ways that were favorable to them. This is why it is important which party controls State legislatures, those legislatures favor their own party when they draw the map.
    - tokenadult 14y ago
      The same way that the reverse used to happen when the Democratic Party caucus had a majority in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. In those days, there was much higher turnout in Republican-leaning districts, but there were fewer of those districts, because Republican voters were concentrated into just a few congressional districts in most states by state legislatures that mostly had a Democratic majority. Now that the tables are turned, people from the other side of the aisle notice this as a problem, but always it takes "tide" elections to switch majority control of state legislatures, which then lock in place (until the next tide) advantages for the majority party in the drawing of electoral districts. This too shall pass.
    - PotatoEngineer 14y ago
      A note on how gerrymandering works: In a perfectly gerrymandered system, the party in power can win using only 25.1% of the vote - and that's if all districts have equal population. You can get by with even less if the districts have imbalanced populations. In that "perfect" system, you draw the districts so that your detractors are 100% of the population in the districts you know that you're going to lose, and your supporters are 50.1% of the population in the ares you want to win. In real life, of course, it's messier and you can't draw the lines quite so perfectly, but here's a link to the districts near Chicago - look how oddly-shaped they are, especially as you get closer to the city center. (They'll probably change again next election season, doubly so if the other party gets control.) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/IL http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/IL
- twoodfin 14y ago
  I don't think the politics break out quite the way you think. For the 10 smallest states by population, 14 of the 20 senators caucus with the Democrats. I think a radical electoral rewrite like this would probably help the Democrats in the Senate, but not by as much as you might think.
  - willholloway 14y ago
    Those 14 Senators are some of the most conservative in the Democratic party and some of them often side with the Republicans on key issues, and/or play the middle to get more of whatever it is they want. Remember how hard it was for Obama to pass health care reform when he had 59 Democrats and Joe Lieberman? Thats what the Senate + the filibuster does to our politics, it grinds it to a halt. Edit: First line should read: Some of those 14 Senators are amongst the most conservative in the Democratic party.
    - twoodfin 14y ago
      Huh? Bernie Sanders and Pat Leahy? The Rhode Island and Delaware delegations? I think you have a narrative in your head that is detached from reality.
      - willholloway 14y ago
        My thesis is simply that more rural states tend towards more conservative politics and when Democrats get elected in rural states they tend to be the more conservative members of the Democratic party. Ben Nelson is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. During the health care reform bill he was a holdout until the end, threatening his own parties signature piece of legislation. He caved when his state was given a special deal.
        twoodfin 14y ago
        But small states aren't all rural, and even some of the ones that are elect fairly liberal Senators. Vermont is the classic case, but Democrats from the Dakotas have been almost legendarily liberal, too. Hell, Tom Daschle was Minority/Majority Leader. And liberal Republicans get elected from small states, too. Remember Lincoln Chafee?
- willholloway 14y ago
  Yes, the Senate is a massive structural advantage for the Republican party and it's policies in the US. It is an advantage that violates the principle of one person one vote and equal representation. People that believe in equal representation as a founding principal of democracy are justifiably outraged by this assault to democratic principles. The Senate was a compromise to form the union at the start, and it has evolved with time. The 17th amendment gave the people the right to vote for their senators directly, previously state legislatures elected senators for the people. The basic truth that all men are equal and there should be one vote for one man supersedes the privilege of some citizens, in some states, having more political power than other citizens in other states. Citizens of large states do not deserve to be discriminated against in the legislature while at the same time subsidizing rural states. The rural states get more than they give in taxes. It's just not right. The Senate, in it's current stage of metamorphosis, is a basic violation of democratic principles and the time has come to alter or abolish it. A quixotic cause to rally for no doubt, but a right and good cause for anyone that keeps a candle burning in the window, that one day America will live up to its promise and potential.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    I have to wonder if you'd feel this strongly about these particular principles if you knew about approval voting or what happens in countries with a unicameral parliament.
    - willholloway 14y ago
      Explain what happens in countries with a unicameral system that you think are negative? I like the streamlined efficiency of a unicameral system in a time where technology is changing things so quickly. New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden have moved from a bicameral to a unicameral system. In the United States, Nebraska operates with one. What are the negatives?
  - tbrownaw 14y ago
    It's just not right. The Senate, in it's current stage of metamorphosis, is a basic violation of democratic principles and the time has come to alter or abolish it. Does not follow. Democracy is not the one true form of government. Constitutional representative democracy just has relatively few catastrophic failure modes.
afterburner 14y ago
The whole idea of trying to do that may, in fact, still be a problem.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  Whether it is or not, it's misleading to say "States with small populations... are overrepresented in the Senate" because all states are equally represented in the Senate, by design. Populations are not equally represented in the Senate by the same design. If you consider this a "problem," fine, but the only solution would be to rewrite the Constitution.
wutbrodo 14y ago
Stating that it's the point of the Senate does not make it desirable. Not to mention the fact that it's not the _only_ point of the Senate: it was also designed to be a smaller, more deliberate body than the House, with each member trying to represent larger (and theoretically more diverse) constituencies with longer term limits (and thus less knee-jerk responsiveness to the whims of the people). This function of the Senate is IMO far more important than arbitrarily giving group A of citizens multiple times more political power than group B. Equal representation of states was conceived of in a time when our nation was very different. The Senate's current form was an acknowledgement of the fact that each state was sovereign. The framing of our Constitution almost bears more similarity to the EU than it does to the US that we recognize today, at least with respect to the attitudes towards the relative independence of each state. On top of that, the divisions that made a "state" anything more than an arbitrary administrative division based on an accident of history are largely gone. The urban-rural divide is far more of a dividing line in terms of demography and ideology than state lines are. Citizens of Los Angeles and Richmond, VA are far more similar to each other than they are to citizens of Shasta County, CA or Wythe County, VA. Just look at any per-county electoral map if you don't believe me. This map, or something like it, preserves all the benefits of the Senate while going a long way to fix what's horribly broken about it: namely, granting huge amounts of political power to arbitrary blocks of citizens.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  I appreciate your response. For what it's worth, I like this map and I am a rural American (a citizen of "Shiprock," apparently). I'm aware of all and agree with most of your points. What I am saying is that in the "rural bias" link they refer to the Senate as "overrepresenting rural citizens" and the point I'm making is that the Senate is not about representing citizens, it's about representing states. And it's meant to balance the House, which is about representing citizens. So the rural bias of the one ought to be adequately met by the urban bias of the other. The ethanol subsidy may be stupid and bad, I'd hardly put it in the top 10 problems we have. I think it would take a lot of spin to recast all our problems as inherited from the Senate and wide open spaces. The idea that you're dominated by the whims of rural voters is a little absurd when we're both so clearly dominated by the whims of large corporations and special interests. To me, this is simply whining about the wrong problem, and a much harder problem to solve. It's not going to be fixed either by an amendment or by redrawing state lines, so what exactly is being proposed here? Nothing--it's simply a fun thought experiment. I just don't approve of fun thought experiments becoming vehicles for absurdist political melodrama.
mikeash 14y ago
I would say that you're pointing to a bug and calling it a feature, personally.

newbie12 14y ago

"Rural bias" is a feature, not a bug. In allocating power in Congress and the Electoral College, the Founders wanted to give weight to geographic region as well as population. Obviously this benefits lower populated states. America was founded as a union of states, and a republic, and was not designed as a direct democracy. Rule of the urban majority mob would be a lot worse than the current structure.

noahl 14y ago
Is it true that they wanted to give weight to geographic regions? I'm curious because the way I heard the story it went something like, "they needed the House to get the big states to agree to the Constitution, and they needed the Senate to get the small states to agree". That also has the effect you're talking about, but I never heard that it was deliberate. I would be interested in why they set it up that way.
- oldcigarette 14y ago
  Yeah this is pretty much it. The senate is there to help preserve the state's rights equally. Without it the larger states get an unobstructed bigger say over the smaller ones. Remember the federal government was setup to be very limited keeping most of the power in the hands of the states.
- newbie12 14y ago
  From the Federalist Papers 62: "In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic. Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger." http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/fed/blfed62.htm http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/fed/blfed62.htm

ctdonath 14y ago

It would relieve some of the rural areas of the overwhelming urban bias. Most of New York is rural, suffering from being out-populated by New York City; "upstate" NY would like to secede from NYC and get their freedom/liberty back. I left NY per its political oppression; returning to the same homes now in Adirondack state would be marvelous. Some states are ripe for "redistricting".

notirk 14y ago
While this isn't a hot topic among New Yorkers I know, I did have a professor at b-school (NYU) who went on rants about the amount of money transferred by the citizens of New York City to the rest of the state of NY. If this is true, I wouldn't be surprised if most "downstate" residents wouldn't mind splitting the state in two, also. Seeing the typical political lockup between the senate and assembly in Albany, I think it would be best for all state citizens to split NYS.
- jessaustin 14y ago
  This money transfer, about which urbanites complain regularly and in numerous contexts, is what one would expect given well-known legislative dynamics. Rural legislators represent constituents who are mostly against expanded benefits spending (you might say that these constituents' preferences are against their interests, but that doesn't change those actual observed preferences). In order for rural legislators to support new benefits against the wishes of their constituents, they must be bribed by receiving an outsize share. I think this redrawing of states would end that dynamic decisively, which maybe is what urban people want.
- ctdonath 14y ago
  If you throw enough money at people, it's hard for them to refuse even when they don't like the circumstances. Take a hard look at WHY all that money is being transferred. Example: Milk production is heavily subsidized in NY, obviously a lot of money being given to rural businesses. Most of the farmers don't want the subsidies, but if they refuse the 'free' money their product prices would rise 2-3x and instantly be driven out of the market. A few politicians find it very beneficial to keep those subsidies in place. Don't complain about people accepting offers they can't refuse.